An innovative opening mechanism for a footbridge

Abstract

Opening bridges are often the only way of responding to the challenges of construction projects. Some recently built moveable footbridges differ distinctly from conventional solutions, showing that this domain offers possibilities of creative exploration. This paper describes the research and design of an innovative opening mechanism for a long-span footbridge in the port of Ouchy, close to Lausanne in Switzerland. To provide a general overview of existing design solutions, the paper offers a classification of opening mechanisms according to their degrees of freedom. Three innovative opening mechanisms for the given site are proposed and the geometrical parameters that govern the kinematic behaviour for each option are introduced. For the preferred solution, the influence of geometrical parameters on the structural behaviour during opening is analysed and design solutions for structural and non-structural elements are proposed and illustrated. The paper concludes with a description of an experimental demonstration of the proposed mechanism on a reduced-scale model.